For Bulgarian Writer, Death Imitates Art

A man carried a photo of Boris Tsankov during his funeral in the Bulgarian capital Sofia on January 10. Photo by BGNES

By Dan Bilefsky

The New York Times/International Herald Tribune

In his first autobiographical thriller, “Secrets of the Mobsters,” the Bulgarian crime writer Bobi Tsankov confronts a gangster boss called Stretko with the aid of a burly bodyguard and a driver, armed with semiautomatic weapons hidden underneath their long coats.

So what now?” the boss says, flashing a cocky grin. “Will your guards kill me?”

Mr. Tsankov freezes, eyeing the crimson points of snipers’ guns aimed at the writer’s heart and head.

In what resembles a scene ripped from the pages of one of his books, Mr. Tsankov, 30, a baby-faced radio presenter, who had a conviction for fraud and a penchant for BMW convertibles, crocodile leather shoes and armed body guards, was gunned down last month in broad daylight in the center of Sofia, shot four times in the head by two gunmen at close range.

His wife, a police officer, was five months pregnant at the time. Krassimir (the Big Margin) Marinov and his brother Nikolai (the Little Margin) Marinov, former wrestling champions who had been charged in connection with several other killings, have been accused of plotting the attack, though Little Margin remains at large. The two actual gunmen also have not been found.

The killing of Mr. Tsankov has shaken this poor Balkan nation, which has had an estimated 191 known contract killings since 1992, according to a list compiled by the Center for the Study of Democracy in Sofia. Georgi Stoev, another writer of books about the Bulgarian underworld, was gunned down in front of a hotel in Sofia in April 2008.

Crime experts say the latest killing has underscored how Bulgaria’s homegrown mafia — known as the mutri, or mugs — still hold sway over the country. It also has left a number of unanswered questions about Mr. Tsankov’s alleged dealings with law enforcement officials and mob figures.

The killing is a serious setback for the new government of Prime Minister Boiko M. Borisov. Mr. Borisov, a square-jawed former bodyguard and once the top official in charge of the country’s police, was elected in July, pledging to eradicate organized crime.

Mr. Borisov, whom Bulgarians have nicknamed Batman for his crime-fighting prowess, scored a rare coup in December with the arrest of more than two dozen kidnappers. Government and police officials and analysts said it showed that the intensified efforts to fight crime were already yielding results.

“If anyone can break organized crime’s hold on this country, it is Borisov,” said Philip Gounev, a criminologist at the Center for the Study of Democracy. “He sees his fight against crime as a historic mission and also thinks and talks like a policeman, swearwords included.”

Mr. Borisov faces a daunting challenge. In the past two decades, only a handful of crime bosses have been jailed, while not a single senior government official accused of involvement in high-level corruption has been convicted.

Meanwhile, Bulgaria, a country of seven million people that is a member of the European Union and NATO, has been ranked by Transparency International, an anti-corruption watchdog group based in Berlin, as among the most corrupt countries in the European Union.

In 2008, it became the first member of the Union to see some of its E.U. aid frozen because of concerns that billions of euros in grants could be siphoned off by organized crime.

Evgeniy Daynov, a leading Bulgarian political analyst, said the Tsankov killing held up an uncomfortable mirror to the lawlessness of the Balkan region, where weak states had allowed criminality to overtake them.

“The conventional wisdom here is that a gangster will only live until 40,” Mr. Daynov said. “So Bobi died 10 years early.”

The roots of the mutri go back to the Cold War when members were recruited from wrestling, boxing and other sports clubs by the Communist regime to serve as armed vigilantes and secret agents. During the power vacuum that followed the collapse of Communism, they transformed themselves into a powerful underground network of traffickers, racketeers and crime bosses.

Today, they can be seen driving around Sofia, the capital, in their oversized sport utility vehicles and Lamborghinis. Investigators say they have infiltrated sectors from insurance to tourism to construction. Known by nicknames like the Beret or the Beak, they linger in nightclubs like Sin City and Lipstick and listen to Chalga, Turkish-infused Bulgarian folk music sung by scantily clad young women.

Friends of Mr. Tsankov, a chubby and manic man who was raised by his mother, said he was drawn from a young age to the mutri’s world of fast cars, Cohiba cigars, automatic weapons and big money. Constantly broke, Mr. Tsankov would use his mob connections to get quick cash, and in return act as a mafia muse, flatterer and hanger-on, according to friends.

They say he received his entree into the underworld from his friend Anton Miltenov, also known as the Beak, a well-known drug baron, who was shot and killed in July 2005 in a Sofia cafe. Investigators say Mr. Miltenov provided Mr. Tsankov with the insider’s stories of gangster intrigue that Mr. Tsankov spun into breathless tales that blurred fantasy and reality.

Another friend, Zlatomir Ivanov, aka the Beret, a former member of Bulgaria’s anti-terrorist squad, who was charged last February with leading a criminal group, is said by investigators to have provided him with sports cars and a retinue of bodyguards. Mr. Ivanov has denied any wrongdoing.

Kamen Sitnilski, Bulgaria’s deputy chief prosecutor, said he was convinced that the killing was a professional hit against Mr. Tsankov. He said Mr. Tsankov had offered to help find witnesses to testify against the Marinov brothers in the other criminal cases.

“Tsankov’s work as a journalist, and his books were at the service of organized crime,” Mr. Sitnilski said during an interview. “He wanted to be famous in Bulgaria. He was a charming young man, but you never knew if what he was saying was the truth, a lie or the work of his imagination.”

Bogdana Lazarova, a leading crime reporter, said she was convinced that at the time of his killing, Mr. Tsankov, desperate for cash, was offering his services to the underworld and the police. She said the police were sending him to different criminal gangs to disseminate false information and gossip.

“He wrote these fabrications on the orders of the secret services to destabilize rival gangs,” Ms. Lazarova said. “He had an unofficial immunity from the state because he was helping them.”

Ms. Lazarova said she would sometimes see Mr. Tsankov at the city law courts in Sofia.

“He was always smiling and looking euphoric like he wanted to show he was in a good mood,” she said.

There were two previous attempts on Mr. Tsankov’s life, including a bomb attack on his home in 2004. Investigators said he used his radio talk show to get cash by asking listeners to send in money for prizes that never materialized and surreptitiously selling air time to advertisers whose companies he would mention on air in return for cash payments.

In the summer of 2003, Mr. Tsankov was arrested after a complaint from a businesswoman, Vania Chervenkova, who accused him of defrauding her of €25,000, or about ,000, she had paid him in cash to advertise her beverages company on billboards in Sofia. When the billboards never materialized, she publicly accused Mr. Tsankov of theft. Several weeks later, she was shot six times and wounded in the head, the neck, the arms and the stomach while shopping for fish in a grocery store.

Though Mr. Tsankov was never charged in the shooting, Ms. Chervenkova said during an interview that she believed he was behind the attack. She sued him to recover her money and won the case in 2007. But she said she still had not received a cent.

“Bobi was a professional con man,” Ms. Chervenkova said in her office, which is protected by a large armored window and doors with biometric locks. “All these attempts to portray him as an investigative journalist who was killed because of his work is an insult to real investigative journalists everywhere.”

Ms. Chervenkova said she took cold comfort from his death, insisting that justice had not been served.

“I’m not satisfied by his killing because with his sudden death,” she said, “He escaped punishment. The punishment is for his mother, his wife and his unborn child. And because I was a victim of a violent crime, I don’t think anyone deserves to die like Bobi did. Only God can give and take life.”

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